April 10, 2018
Paris Review: The Strange Magic Of Libraries
Great High Mountain
“You,” Mother Jones yelled at the gallused, grizzled men. “have stood and seen yourselves robbed.” Of every ton of coal they mined, “so much was taken out, and professional murderers were hired to keep you in subjugation, and you paid for it! Damn you, you are not fit to live under the flag. You paid […]
The Trial of Sheriff Sid Hatfield
My great great uncle, LP Somerville, ran away from home to fight in the Spanish American War that made Teddy Roosevelt famous as well as President. Like many of the mountain settlers in Appalachia, LP was proud, adventurous, self-reliant and patriotic. Even ornery. That did not make him unique in West Virginia. I can remember […]
February 9, 2018
Keeping with the week’s theme. WaPo: Our Institutions Are Under Attack
The Post Horn
For here were God knew how many citizens, deliberately choosing not to communicate by US Mail. It was not an act of treason, nor possibly even of defiance. But it was a calculated withdrawal, from the life of the Republic, from its machinery. Whatever else was being denied them out of hate, indifference to the power […]
And Time Stood Still
I saw Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers on their Anniversary Tour in Tampa in May of 2017. The show was epic in a way that only a few artists with a huge back catalog of instantly recognizable songs could pull off. The fact that we were all Floridians traveling in the same time machine back […]
January 11, 2018
Style is thus a form of honor and courage, just as, Santayana tells us, is the pursuit of truth always. Justice Benjamin Cardozo in “Mr. Justice Holmes”
January 4, 2018
All ages shall speak with amaze and applause Of the courage we’ll show in support of our laws To die we can bear – but to serve we disdain For shame is to freemen more dreadful than pain. John Dickinson, “The Liberty Song” a Revolutionary War Era poem